Slaughterhouse of Sotin: Mass grave found in Croatia finally solves mystery of people who were taken away in the middle of night by Serbs

Ten bodies of people taken away in the dead of night and killed during the earliest part of the Yugoslavian wars have been discovered in a mass grave near a slaughterhouse.

It is hoped the find finally solves the mystery of Sotin, a Croatian village near Vukova.

Thirteen residents of the village were killed by Serbs during the night on December 26, 1991

Croatia’s deputy war veterans minister Bojan Glavasevic said that remains of ten people, believed to belong to those taken, had been exhumed from a mass grave

It comes after three bodies were discovered elsewhere in the village last week.

Glavasevic said it was probable that the ten bodies had been moved in 1997 from the grave discovered last week.

They had been buried in a trench used for disposing of animal remains next to an abattoir, and the human remains were mixed with animal particles.

The find comes after a collaborative investigation by the Zagreb and Belgrade authorities.

After 22 years this is seen as the first indication of official cooperation between the Government of Croatia and the Serbian authorities on the issue of missing persons.

In February, an investigation was launched against several wartime Serb fighters. Authorities were investigating the killing of 16 Croatian civilians in Sotin from October 1991 until the end of the year, Balkan Insight reports.

Two former police and territorial defence officers in Sotin, Zarko Milosevic and Dragan Loncar, were arrested on war crimes charges on February 4.

The prosecutor in Belgrade told Balkan Insight: 'Milosevic and Loncar, together with other members of the police and territorial defence forces, arrested more than ten civilians and detained them at the police station.

'On December 26, 1991, they put them in an army truck and took them to an unknown location and killed them with automatic weapons.'

During the war, 64 people in total were killed in the small village, which lies east of Vukovar.

Vukovar, dubbed 'Croatia's Stalingrad' because of the devastation wrought on it in the attack, fell to the Yugoslav Army and Serb fighters in November 1991 after a devastating siege. Prisoners of war sought refuge in a hospital.

When the city fell, Serbian troops seized the prisoners. At least 200 were taken to a pig farm in Ovcara two miles away and beaten, tortured and then killed. Their bodies were also found in mass graves.

This is the fifth case that Serbia’s war crime prosecutor has launched over alleged war crimes around Vukovar.

The previous four cases related to crimes committed at the Ovcara farm.

Serbian courts have so far found 15 people guilty of war crimes in Vukovar and sentenced them to a total of 207 years in prison.

The Yugoslav Army and Serbian paramilitary units besieged Vukovar for three months in 1991.

It followed Croatia’s declaration of independence from Yugoslavia, and thousands of non-Serbs were expelled when the town was captured.

Wednesday 1 May 2013

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